(This is the first in a series of "why I am not" posts, with homage to Bertrand Russell. My plan is to run the political spectrum outside-in. Next: why I am not an anarchist.)

I thought I'd start with this because vacation interrupted me in the middle of an interesting discussion with an an anonymous anti-Semitic commenter.

(I'm not sure if Anon would embrace this adjective, but I am using it in the same sense as, say, "anti-American," which seems perfectly reasonable to me. While I admire Murray Rothbard's definition of an anti-Semite as anyone who proposes legal disabilities against Jews, by this definition the creed is basically extinct. So it strikes me as sensible to use the adjective for anyone with negative views on Jews as a whole.)

More specifically, the commenter is a fan of Kevin MacDonald. My views on MacDonald roughly track those of John Derbyshire. (MacDonald's response to Derbyshire's essay is here.)

There are many bad reasons not to be an anti-Semite. For example, anti-Semitism is unfashionable. If you want to be fashionable, don't be an anti-Semite. Obviously this is not a concern here at UR.

My father is Jewish, at least racially. This does not make me Jewish, but surely it makes me suspect, at least to some anti-Semites. But if this was my best reason for not being anti-Semitic, surely it would tend to confirm rather than refute MacDonald's theories. If your father is Catholic, are you not allowed to be an anti-Catholic?

In fact, anti-Semitism MacDonald style is probably the most courageous political belief anyone can hold in 2007 - at least if you live anywhere west of Gaza City. This does not make it right, but it certainly does not give anyone who believes in "diversity" and "the environment" any right to sneer. I admire conviction, I despise cant. Anti-Semitism was cant in Munich in 1936, or in 1886 for that matter. It is cant in Tehran today. In California in 2007, it can be nothing but conviction.

Anon's argument specifically was that, in my classification of American castes and conflicts, and my discussion of the belief system of the ruling Brahmin caste, I neglected Jewish influence. Specifically, as per MacDonald, I neglected the importance of Jewish intellectuals in the transition of the American establishment from 1920s style "super-protestantism" to postwar secularism and multiculturalism.

Basically, the reason I neglected this is that I don't see it. But the point is certainly debatable - so let's debate it. The basic question is whether, as I argue, multiculturalism is best understood as a simple development of mainline Protestantism, or whether, as Anonymous believes, it should be seen as a Jewish-Protestant syncretism.

If we use the five tests of belief system classification to ask this question, we get a very interesting result. We have a clear positive on one tests: the cladistic (many multiculturalists come from a Jewish background). We have a clear negative on the nominalist and typological methods (multiculturalism does not claim to be Jewish, and it's pretty hard to get from massacreeing the Midianites to supporting open borders).

We have what I believe is a false positive on the morphological test. The problem is that not only does Christianity have ancient Jewish roots, but the Puritans of Cromwell's era for some reason developed an Old Testament fetish and decided they were Israelites, which is why boys are still named "Jacob" or "Ezra."

What was this reason? Well, Anon argues that this reflects actual Jewish influence. He points to the fact that Cromwell rescinded the expulsion of Jews from England. But it is a little difficult to figure out how this could possibly have been the result of Jewish scheming. How can you scheme when you're not there? The Japanese, also, have a bizarre fascination with the Jews, and they're not even Christian. Occam's razor tells me the Jewish odyssey is just a plain good story, especially if you feel persecuted. (The Christian Identity movement, which is actually anti-Semitic itself, is still pushing this one.)

If we factor out "Hebraic-Puritanism," the only significant morphological resemblance between Judaism and multiculturalism is the absence of an afterlife. Significant? Perhaps. But, as I've pointed out, mainline Protestants have been shedding theological baggage in a frenzy of streamlining for the last 200 years. Emerson had already discarded hell in the 1830s. Rumors that he was born Ralph Waldo Emerstein are, as far as I can discern, unsubstantiated.

We are left with the adaptive test. This, of course, is MacDonald's favorite.

But MacDonald uses it in a very bizarre way. It's not just that he believes in group selection - he believes in group action. I believe in human action. A group is not a person.

It is perfectly possible that Germans, Sioux or Irishmen are full of Khaldunian asabiya and act collectively in ways that favor Germans, Sioux or Irishmen. But in order for this to work, you need a cohesive belief system that rewards altruism on behalf of the group, and discourages "defecting" actions that would otherwise favor the individual. You need, in other words, an actual movement of ethnic nationalism.

Of course "Judaism" has this in theory. The whole Torah is a story of pure asabiya. The Jews get their asses kicked when they're divided. They kick ass when they're together.

But just as Christianity is not the Bible, Judaism is not the Torah. It is an evolving system like any other. Is there Jewish ethnic nationalism in the 20th century? There certainly is. But it is found among Zionists, Hasidim, etc, and certainly not among the Reform and socialist Jews who in the middle of the century became part of the American elite. For example, Reform Judaism is almost nonexistent in Israel.

I think there is a Jewish influence in ultracalvinism. But I think it is exactly the opposite of what MacDonald's theory suggests. What we're seeing is not syncretism - it is assimilation.

Basically, the Jews (like my ancestors) who came to the US were people who wanted to get ahead - as individuals. They were done with the ghetto and the shtetl. They wanted money and power. Doesn't everyone?

It was only natural, therefore, that they would be drawn to the social patterns of the most prestigious class in their new country - the mainline "super-Protestants." Like most converts, they adopted the most fashionable views of the Brahmin elite, which was already well down the road toward secularization and Unitarianism in the modern sense of the word. Indeed, for the earlier-arriving and (much as I hate to admit it, since my ancestors spoke "jargon") more cultured German Jews, much of this process had already happened in Europe. Reform Judaism is pretty much Protestantism in all but name, as is of course "scientific" Marxist socialism.

Whereas the Brahmins had no reason at all to adopt Jewish ways of thought. Nor do I see any way in which they did. The assimilation was entirely in the other direction. The daughters of the Mayflower did not learn Yiddish.

There is certainly no denying that the injection of smart Jews into the Brahmin caste made it all the more successful, which presumably has contributed to the incredible arrogance with which it bestrides the world today. But I simply do not see the Jewish asabiya, which is why I will continue to lay the whole trip on the Calvinists.

Now, Anonymous has an advantage in that he has actually read MacDonald's books, as opposed to just a couple of essays, and he is surely right to note that MacDonald has an enormous mass of "corroborating evidence."

Because all historians do. A historian is not a mere collator of facts - he or she is creating an interpretation, much like a trial lawyer. The goal of history is to paint a picture of the past. The test, for any reader, is simply whether you find that picture convincing. Volume of evidence has not much to do with it.

In fact, it is often a contrary indicator, because a lawyer with a weak case often feels the temptation to try to inundate the jury with a vast mass of detail. The strategy is essentially to demand that the reader either agree, or do the work of assembling the same detail into a counter-narrative. The canonical example is Johnnie Cochran's great gambit, "if the gloves don't fit, you must acquit," although you often see the same strategy in Holocaust revisionists, such as Germar Rudolf. (MacDonald does not claim to be a Holocaust revisionist, and I am not accusing him of being one.)

Why didn't the gloves fit? Why weren't the gas-chamber walls stained blue? The only possible answer is "who the hell knows." There are all sorts of chemical and physical processes that can cause leather to shrink, Prussian blue to decay, etc, etc. There is no evidence, there can be no evidence, for any particular one of them. Forcing your opponent to prove a negative is not a legitimate rhetorical tactic.

As members of the jury, we have to evaluate the totality of the evidence on both sides. We have to look at both pictures. We have no time machines and we cannot expect perfection.

My view is that the pictures that show OJ as the killer, and the Holocaust as a German war crime, are much more convincing than the pictures that show OJ being framed by the LAPD, and the Holocaust as Allied propaganda. And similarly, I think the history of the American intellectual elite in the 20th century is much more a picture of Jewish assimilation than Jewish infiltration.

But of course, I am perfectly ready to be proven wrong on any of these issues. My patience is not unlimited, but one of the trials of having unpopular opinions is that you find it difficult to condemn others for their own unpopular opinions. (I actually view this as a benefit, rather than a trial, but the Jew in me feels free to complain about it anyway.)

33 Comments:

The internet is full of those who blame Jews for everything. I call them internet circus freaks on my secondary blog Judeophobe Watch

There seems to be a need to invent a Jewish connection to every evil that occurred on this planet.

And most would consider you to be a Jew. They usually go by Hitler's definition of Jews, but they'll consider someone who is 1/16th Jewish to be a full Jew if they have any power or committed a crime.

The thing about MacDonald is his science that proves that the claim that most Jews are Khazars to be bs, is correct. This pisses off many anti-semites who claim that Israel is full of European Khazars. Yet they love Macdonald's views about collective Jewish control and motive.

The internet is full of those who hold ridiculous opinions on every possible subject.

Fortunately, the Internet Protocol transports data, not explosives, so I feel safe in discussing these issues in a grown-up manner.

Also fortunately, there are no significant Western military or political forces associated with MacDonald-like anti-Semitic ideals. (There are certainly non-Western forces, but this is a very different problem.)

Therefore, I don't see why these ideas can be considered dangerous in any way, shape or form. Surely the danger of fashionable ideas is much greater. If anti-Semitism found a way to be fashionable again, it certainly could be dangerous, but we are a very long way from that.

In a way, your "Why I am not a XXX" project is a non-starter -- becausewith your aversion to any idealism, you are not going to be anything, and you are going to avoid most, if not all, language of justification -- including theories of culture, history, and society.

You write - "he believes in group action. I believe in human action", so yes, of course, we need look no further regarding what Jews, or any other group, have done.

It's hard imagine how America would be different today if your Jewish ancestors (and mine) had been kept out, and I'm tending to agree with you that whatever leading roles we Jews have taken (in the entertainment, textile, food marketing,publishing businesses etc) would otherwise have been taken, with no better or worse result, by ambitious non-Jews.

But the one obvious difference is America's support for an ethno-centric Jewish state in the middle east.

That's hardly in either American -- or international -- self interest.

I agree with your claim hat Jews acquired influence by becoming ultracalvinist gentiles. Reform Jews celebrate Passover in the same way that ultracalvinist African-Americans celebrate Kwanza: as just another feast-day in the liturgical calendar of multiculturalism. A "progressive" haggadot is just an ultracalvinist fable with names and places quoted from the Torah to satisfy historical nostalgia.

But note that these assimilated Jews are still celebrating what they call "Passover". They might even buy kosher wine for the occasion and conduct parts of the seder in mangled Hebrew. They still label themselves as Jews.

Humans are quick to recognize a label (even when that label is arbitrarily applied!) and to organize themselves around/against that label. Like the marranos in medieval Christian Spain, ultracalvinist Jews belong to a distinct "Jewish" faction. Their Jewishness may be an arbitrary construction (like "Trotstkyism"), but their factional identity is a veridical phenomenon.

Certainly Jewish-Americans have some influence on our policy toward Israel, as Cuban-Americans have toward Cuba. As an isolationist, I don't think it's in the US's interest to care much about either of these place, and nor do I think our efforts in these areas are, though well-motivated as always, beneficial in practice. So I guess to this extent I agree with you.

But a new US policy toward Israel (or Cuba) is not exactly the largest of the patches I would apply if I was in a position to apply patches. I certainly don't feel that Israel is in any way uniquely evil or immoral.

And I don't even feel that anti-Semitism versus philo-Semitism are particularly important factors in the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian friction. But this is a complicated point and the comment box is not the place to explain it.

The identity they certainly have. But they also have a belief system that tells them it would be evil and wrong to act on that identity. By and large, American Jews may believe in identity politics for blacks, Mexicans and Eskimoes, but they certainly oppose it for themselves.

It's true that good progressive "Jews" (ask the postmodern poskim: when is a Jew no longer a Jew?) abjure clannishness. But don't you think that removal from identity politics is an adaptive group strategy? Given that Jews already enjoy prosperity and influence beyond their tiny population, non-Jews would be infuriated if Jews were to clamor for official protection as a "minority". Instead, ultracalvinist Jews scramble to reassure everyone else that they are not special.

Interestingly, the most unassimilated Jewish communities (in certain parts of Brooklyn, for example) do engage in the sort of identity politics that we associate with poor blacks, Eskimos, etc. These communities are extremely territorial; they clearly advertise that outsiders, including the police, are unwelcome. They cultivate furious grievances against gentiles, obsessively track the achievements of (assimilated) Jews as evidence of their own racial superiority, and viciously denounce race-traitors (again, assimilated Jews). Like ghetto people everywhere, they loiter on streetcorners, have high birthrates, depend heavily upon public assistance, provide little tax revenue to the state, and don't care to send their kids to public schools.

I don't know how essential Jewish Americans are to the Israel lobby. I would guess Jewish Americans are more likely to sympathize with the Palestinians than non-Jewish Americans. Furthermore, the "China Lobby" (Leon Hadar has a good article on the similarities here) did just fine without the Taiwanese having a similar sort of place in American society as Jews. The real reason the US sides with Israel is that during the Cold War we came to see them as being like-minded (western, democratic and with a market economy) surrounded by Arab client states of the Soviet Union. Today we are at war with a radical Islamist group (al Qaeda) which also expresses hate toward Israel (though they tend to lump it together with the US, al Qaeda has been lax enough in actually attacking Israel that I am inclined to believe it is mostly a pose to gain cred on the Arab street and not that big of a concern to them). Israel is part of our ingroup, it's opponents are an outgroup. The average American is no less inexplicable in his affection for Israel than the Brahmin's in the past were for their "fellow traveling" with communism, and indeed a good deal less so since in the latter case the other party recognized them as "useful idiots" and would have destroyed them given the chance.

America has had a rather sentimental foreign policy for a while because it can afford to. There is no real reason why we needed to protect the Kosovarans from Milosevic, the Kurds from Saddam (and possibly Turkey now) or , if certain people get their way, the Fur from the janjaweed. When I saw the part of "One Day of War" (a really great documentary that I wish was easier to find) in which the Hmong children are naked and wailing during a respite of being hunted by the Laotian government for their grandfathers' generation's alliance with the US, hoping that the camera crew (the first foreigners they have ever seen) will save them or at least provide something better to eat than bark and sawdust, at that moment I felt horrible and wished something could be done for them. Now, I'm a person who prides himself on detachment and moral-free reasoning. The average American would find that attitude and my pride in it abominable. Is a conspiracy theory really necessary the behavior of a government they elect?

Interesting comment about the Brooklyn Jews. My father is actually from this general area, and he notes the integration of Jewish and Italian cultural tropes, at least as of 50 years ago. But I had no idea this survived.

My problem with "group adaptive" strategies is that I really can't see how such a thing would be defined. I can see adaptive selection in DNA and in "memes," but we are not talking about reproduction here, nor about conversion of non-Jews to Judaism or vice versa.

Perhaps there is a small amount of asabiya in the approach of conforming to Protestant universalism, but since assimilation works so well on an individual basis...

I'll try to work from the circunference to the center on this, beginning with the supposed "fact" of Cromwell's rescission of the expulsion of Jews from England. It is true that he contemplated it, but Jews did not actually return to England until the reign of Charles II, a crypto-Catholic. The Jewish community of Amsterdam had supported the Restoration with gifts and loans.

Charles welcomed Jews without seeking to convert them to Christianity (as Cromwell had wished to do), and granted them exemption from laws requiring conformity with the Church of England. His successor, James II/VII, who is not usually portrayed as a supporter of religious liberty, reiterated Charles II's endenization of the Jews and in 1685 gave them "what amounted to a Declaration of Indulgence" (D. Katz, "Jews in History," 149-50). James's daughter, the princess (later queen) Anne visited the Bevis Marks synagogue during Passover in 1681, and was afterward entertained at "the Jewes house."

The perception of Jewish loyalty to the house of Stuart persisted long after the accession of the house of Hanover. One Whig pamphleteer equated the disloyalty of Jacobites with the perfidy of Jews:

"And as there is so great an Analogy between the Jews and the Jacobites, so hath their been the same likeness between their Kings...

"... it is the unhappy Fate of both these Peple, who have been alike deprived of their own divinely constituted Kings, to live under governments which they hold to be damnable and diabolical, and no Allegiance nor Submission to be due to them" But, on the contrary are daily hoping and looking for their destruction."

This Julius Streicher avant la lettre was none other than the genial Henry Fielding, better known as the author of "Tom Jones."

So, what do these historical minutiæ have to do with the supposed influence of Jews in culture and politics today? The answer, I suggest, is that many who comment on such matters look only at the views and attitudes of the American Jewish community, which it has been remarked enjoys the incomes of WASPs and displays the voting patterns of Hispanics. It ought to be explored to what extent this is a product of its peculiar experience both in its principal countries of origin and in the early days of its presence on American shores.

I have never seen a study of the views and attitudes of the Jewish community in Britain, but strongly suspect that they differ markedly from those of American Jews. Jews in Britain have never been numerous, and have been a prosperously middle-class community since the Restoration. The founding stock was Sephardic (e.g., the family of Disraeli) and this was later supplemented by bourgeois German Jewish stock (e.g., the Rothschilds, Reuters, and even the Marxes).

Somehow it does not surprise me, given the historic Jacobite/Tory associations of British Jewry, that the late chief rabbi of Great Britain, Immanuel Lord Jakobovits, was a Tory peer and a great friend of Margaret Thatcher's. His views on such matters as abortion and homosexuality would have pleased the late Jerry Falwell. Lady Thatcher was supposed to have said that it was a pity she could not make Lord Jakobovits archbishop of Canterbury.

I suggest that the characteristic cultural leftism of many American Jews (e.g. Abe Foxman of the ADL or many Jewish media/entertainment figures) represents a combination of residual attitudes brought by ancestors from eastern Europe (see Yuri Slezkine's "The Jewish Century" for a good account of their origin) and American secular progressivism of the sort Mencius has called "ultracalvinist." It is not, in other words, intrinsically or peculiarly Jewish in any theological sense.

It's difficult to approach this topic with the requisite delicacy. Perhaps it's impossible, but I will try, and plead my innocence of antisemitism.

It seems that you want to have it both ways. By this I mean that you say that a large number of people who disavow Christianity are really crypto-Christians, while those who proclaim, if not their Judaism, their Jewishness (and the secular left has been full of people just like this for decades) , are not meaningfully Jewish, but are rather entirely assimilated puppets of a parasitic post/Christian ideology. This is unpersuasive. Yes, the Jewish members of the élite have accepted the pre-existing unitarianism of the Protestant élite - they were already monotheists who didn't believe in the divinity of Jesus, so it was perhaps no great leap - but to say that they have assimilated is to imply that they retain no distinctiveness in outlook, affiliation, or marriage patterns. Like, say, Dutch-Americans. The intricacies of theology aside, the self-identification of Jews as Jews and as victims of persecution, coupled with their preeminence in the chattering classes, means that their perspective is enormously influential. Perhaps it doesn't matter, yet I find it hard to believe that, were the chattering classes one-third Dutch rather than one-third Jewish, the general emphasis since the 1970s of American culture and politics on pluralism and multiculturalism, and the specific emphasis on the Holocaust (to the exclusion of crimes that didn't involve members of highly influential groups in America like Stalin's, Mao's, or Pol Pot's), and on the Holocaust as specifically a crime against Jews, would be absent. This emphasis has real effects, for instance in the way that one refers to one's opponents as fascists, rather than communists, or the way that each new crisis is viewed through the lens of Munich. I emphasise that one can hardly fault American Jews, many of whom lost relatives to the Nazis, for being "hung up" as it were on the people who tried to wipe them out. I surely don't. But it is blindness for the rest of us to ignore that that had an effect on the way they and their descendants viewed the world, especially when they tend to make no secret of it. Likewise, it is mistaken to think that they got this from the post-Protestant establishment, the same one that many Jewish supporters of greater immigration are only too eager to remind us kept many of their ancestors from immigrating to escape Hitler.

Of course, I could be wrong. I am open to, even eager for, persuasion. It would help to wash away the icky feeling I get from partially agreeing with MacDonald and his loonier exponents.

Your feeling of delicacy is exactly the right attitude. It is this and only this that makes freethinking such delicious sport. We may fail, but we are climbing real rocks here, not gym walls, and there is no net.

I'm sure the effect you describe is real. But what is its magnitude? Is it zero? I wouldn't say it's zero. I don't think anyone could say it's zero. Certainly Boas, Montagu, etc, were members of the tribe, and so on.

If you go back to that TIME "American Malvern" article, I think you see pretty clearly the roots of the postwar consensus. And there are no Jews in sight.

Remember that even the Sulzbergers of the Times played down the Holocaust during the war. It was not just the WASPs at State. Just as Bush goes to great lengths to avoid being seen as fighting a war for oil, the predecessors of the Polygon did the same to avoid being seen as fighting a war for Jews.

This tells some people that Bush is actually fighting a war for oil, but I am not one of them. I think it shows sensitivity to a charge that is basically false, but believed by many. (If WWII had been a war for Jews, it might actually have saved some Jews. If Iraq had been a war for oil, gas wouldn't be $3.50 a gallon.)

I think the simplest explanation for the deification of the Holocaust, over for example the Ukrainian genocide, is just that the Holocaust is very useful. The Polygon has a thousand different ways of comparing its enemies to Nazis. That it relies increasingly on these weapons is no surprise.

Look at the concern shown by Civil War Republicans, especially those from the negrophobic Midwest, for blacks. What a river of crocodile tears! For most who supported it, antislavery was simply useful. Many, including Lincoln, said quite explicitly that they had no use for blacks. But (besides their "free labor" ideology) they still waxed moral on the subject.

Obviously it is impossible that the "Black Republicans" were in any way culturally influenced by African-Americans. But if you didn't know it was impossible, if you only saw their actions, you might believe the proposition. I think the idea that the merger with Reform Judaism seriously influenced Protestant Brahmin culture is in the same general category as this, although the proposition is much, much more plausible.

The trouble with Moldbug's proposal to call anything critical of Jews or Jewish ideas "anti-Semitic" is that it is well known phrase used to describe extremely taboo behavior. Try running "sed" on Moldbug's anti-Christian rants. s/Christian/Jew/, et cetera. You will get something that we are taught to believe is grotesque and vile anti-Semitism, something that the planet has not seen since Joseph Goebells. As Moldbug demonstrates with his free speech, there is no corresponding taboo about bashing Christians or ideas derived from Christianity.

The mass media, which is still very influential, considers such behavior with respect to Jews to be extremely taboo. Thus Mel Gibson exhibted a very small amount "anti-Semitic" behavior when drunk and was raked over the coals in the media until he apologized. "Anti-Semitic" people are supposed to be very evil and very creepy, like those villains-beyond-the-pale in Hollywood movies who wear swastikias and throw Jews into the ovens. So calling anybody who criticizes Jews or Judaism or Jewish ideas as such as "anti-Semitic" is a wonderful way to insulate your favorite people or ideas from criticism, if you are a Jew or Judeophile.

There are millions of paranoid Jews and Judeophiles who have seen too many of their own movies and dread the "anti-Semites" under every rug, and there are millions more who are happy to use accusations of anti-Semitism to stifle any criticism of Israel and Jewish ethnic nepotism.

I agree with the "anti-Semitic" commentator that the lack of mention, or brushing off in a mere sentence as merely derivative, of Freudianism, Marxism, and other highly influential statist beliefs of heavily Jewish origin, in an otherwise quite well researched survey of religious influence on statist beliefs, by our supposedly libertarian Moldbug is interesting and disturbing. Moldbug is living proof of MacDonald's thesis. MacDonald might be interested in a data point that suggests this genetic trait is paternal, despite the matrilinearity of Jewish religion.

I admit that it is hard to trace the lines of cultural influence, since there has been much back-and-forth between Christianity and Judaism and the secular ideas of the West for a very long time, but many have commented on the influences of the Talmud, the book of Isaiah, and many other direct Jewish sources on Marx, the influence of the Kaballah on Freud, and so on.

Furthermore, MacDonald's theory is mainly one of sociobiology, not cultural influence. Jews who are completely secular or "Protestantized" still exhibit strong ethnic loyalties. They still live in fear of "anti-Semitism" and use the Taboo as a way to stifle criticism of their fellow ethnics. "Jewish" conveniently refers to a culture, a religion, or a race, depending on how effective the definition is in debate. Watch the meaning move as the debate moves. They still bash ideas that provide independence from Judaism. The biggest example is Christianity, which allowed Gentiles to gain wisdom from the Old Testament without becoming dependent on the Jewish priesthood. There have been many efforts, including Freud, Marx, and much of the modern mass media, to reestablish this Jewish priesthood over non-Jews in moral and political affairs. To ignore this is to be ignorant of both religious history and of how the twentieth century happened.

anon2: I guess I'm one of those "judeophiles". I suppose it's an extension of my acknowledged anglophilia.

Why is Christianity treated differently from Judaism? For one think, as you noted, Christianity is just a religious doctrine, whereas judaism can be an ethnic/racial thing. For another thing, until recently the jews have not had their own country and have frequently been attacked because they are jews. I don't know how many Christians have attacked in recent centuries because of their Christianity (I'm sure it is greater than zero) but I am confident that it is fewer than the number of jews. Nobody would be worried if I started making derogatory remarks about people with green eyes because there is no precedent of green-eye hatred. There is one for violent anti-semitism. I do agree with you that the "anti-semitism" card is thrown too often to silence debate. Lawrence Auster in particular seems prone to it.

our supposedly libertarian MoldbugHe has never claimed to be a libertarian. Just as one can admire the work of Franz Oppenheimer (as Murray Rothbard did) without being a socialist, one can be influenced by libertarian ideas without being a libertarian. Mencius describes himself as a "formalist" and a major purpose of this blog is to explain formalism.

I take a rather dim view of Freudianism (like Karl Popper I think it is pseudo-science and like Thomas Szasz I think the analogies of "mental health" to physical health have mostly caused confusion), but I do not think it is inherently statist. If you go to mises.org you can even find those who want to rehabilitate Freud for libertarians. Libertarians still like to quote Freud's analysis ("attack" might be a better word) of Woodrow Wilson.

many have commented on the influences of the Talmud, the book of Isaiah, and many other direct Jewish sources on Marx, the influence of the Kaballah on Freud, and so on.I do agree with you that judaism was an important influence on Freud and Strauss, even if neither was all that religious. I do not know if the same could be said of Marx. He was raised as a Protestant and always spoke of jews in the third person without considering himself one (and has been considered by many to have been an anti-semite). It might be said that he was racially jewish but not ethnically (I suppose that might be stretching it, but you get the idea). If you can point to some reputable sources (perhaps pre-Holocaust ones when crying "anti-semitism" could not shut down discussion) showing the link between judaism and marxism, I'd like to read them.

Jews who are completely secular or "Protestantized" still exhibit strong ethnic loyalties. They still live in fear of "anti-Semitism" and use the Taboo as a way to stifle criticism of their fellow ethnics.I agree with you on their oversensitivity to anti-semitism (this is the United States for goodness sake, the peasants have had plenty of pitchforks and guns since the beginning and if they were ever going to execute a pogrom they'd have done so by now), but not on their strong ethnic loyalties. The universities, which Mencius and others have identified as a major leg of the Polygon, would be FAR more jewish if they were truly meritocratic and did not discriminate against jews on the basis of race (since jews are white, although sephardics and mizrahi might qualify for some benefits but they are almost negligible in the U.S). I've met Tim Wise in person, and he's not using anti-racism as a stick to beat white christian america. He really has the most full-blown kind of white guilt and is determined to make sure even ethnic whites (explicitly including jews like himself) who identify themselves in opposition to nativism/racism see themselves as beneficiaries of "white privilege" and internally racist.

The biggest example is Christianity, which allowed Gentiles to gain wisdom from the Old TestamentWhat wisdom is in the Old Testament? When I was younger and a believer I much preferred the Old to the New because all the good stories were in there, while in the latter there was a lot of preaching that qualify as "wisdom".

without becoming dependent on the Jewish priesthood.The Sadducees (priests) are long gone. The Pharisees and their descendants (rabbis) have dominated judaism after the destruction of the second temple.

I believe I linked to this before, but this is probably one of the most important threads in which to link to it. Anyone talking about "the jews", their behavior and place in society throughout modern history should read Thomas Sowell's "Are Jews Generic", which I have put into a word file and hosted here.

Thanks for your comments. In general, I agree with tggp's answer, but I would add a couple of points.

I agree completely that the taboo against anti-Semitism makes no sense. Not least because there are so few anti-Semites around to worry about. But we have all sorts of taboos - for example, it is just as taboo to attack black people. This does not indicate deep African influence in the corridors of power. The fact that the taboo is irrational does not demonstrate causality. Yes, it clearly serves the interests of Jews, but the same can be said for the Africans above.

Also, I assume you are familiar with the work of Cochran and Harpending on Ashkenazi intelligence. In a society ruled by a cognitive elite, this is a factor that can give you very significant false positives.

Freud and Marx are excellent examples. Neither - especially not the former - would be at all out of place if their background was Christian. Freud was Jewish, Jung was not. Marx was Jewish, Lassalle was not. The difference simply does not leap out at me.

The universities, which Mencius and others have identified as a major leg of the Polygon, would be FAR more jewish if they were truly meritocratic and did not discriminate against jews on the basis of race (since jews are white, although sephardics and mizrahi might qualify for some benefits but they are almost negligible in the U.S).The universities are part of the "polygon" and gatekeepers to the polygon as well. One is well on his way to a position in the establishment with a degree from Harvard, Georgetown, or Yale.

Anyway, how much more Jewish are the elite universities supposed to be? Aren't the Ivies and similarly-esteemed schools already something like 20-30% Jewish? Jews only make up 2% of the US population, and a smaller portion of the college-age population. I know there are quotas limiting Asians in California universities, but I don't think there's been a quota limiting Jewish admission anywhere since the 1950s when antisemitism began to lose respectability. Besides, Asians in California are 12% of the population, with what we might delicately refer to as underperforming groups making up a plurality if not a majority of the rest of the college-age population. I don't think Jews are so proportionally numerous anywhere outside of, perhaps, New York City.

Back on the subject, even if I grant that the secular Jewish program is essentially the same as "ultracalvinism," it occurs to me that Jews, by having a colorable, if not, in the American context, particularly plausible, claim of victimization (grandpa had to go to CUNY because he was kept out of Yale isn't particularly heart-rending), have a degree of protection from criticism as they advance an anti-traditionalist agenda that is not posessed by members of the groups constructed as hegemonic. They can, and frequently do, shout antisemitism, which is a very effective (though not honorable) rejoinder.

Anonymous: You are right. I exaggerated how Jewish universities would be considering how small the proportion of the population is jewish. Asians make a better example. I didn't know there were quotas explicitly against asians anywhere in the United States. I thought it was just the case that extra points go to blacks and hispanics, and that the people who benefited most from meritocracy are asians and jews. If you could provide some links on asian quotas, I'd be thankful.

Thanks to Steve Sailer, I'm not a fan of Malcolm Gladwell. Nevertheless, this essay is pertinent. It points out that rather academically meritocratic policies had resulted in about 20% of harvard students being jewish. As you mentioned, they initially responded with quotas, but importantly those were not all that popular with faculty either and so the faculty instead redefined "merit" so as to exclude jews in other ways. A quote: "By 1933, the end of Lowell's term, the percentage of Jews at Harvard was back down to fifteen per cent. If this new admissions system seems familiar, that's because it is essentially the same system that the Ivy League uses to this day. According to Karabel, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton didn't abandon the elevation of character once the Jewish crisis passed. They institutionalized it." Things like athletics, alumni connections, extracurricular activities and personal essays are often seen as perfectly legitimate (and from the standpoint of receiving donations they very well may be) for schools, but their prominence arose from the effort to exclude unpopular but smart students. These, of course, also apply to asians today as do any other policies that prioritize something other than academic performance. La Griffe du Lion gives the numbers on how different an IQ-meritocracy would be from the status quo here and how over-represented ashkenazi jews are at the tail-end of high IQ here (he even mentions Kevin Macdonald's theories at the beginning).

here are some links. It appears it's more a matter of bypassing Asians in favor of less-qualified black and "Hispanic" applicants than a matter of outright quotas, though the universities have never been too forthright about having explicit quotas in place, either. Whatever the reason, though they are overrepresented by proportion of the population, Asian Americans are underrepresented at elite universities based on performance.

I'm sure the effect you describe is real. But what is its magnitude? Is it zero? I wouldn't say it's zero. I don't think anyone could say it's zero. Certainly Boas, Montagu, etc, were members of the tribe, and so on.

We have what I believe is a false positive on the morphological test. The problem is that not only does Christianity have ancient Jewish roots, but the Puritans of Cromwell's era for some reason developed an Old Testament fetish and decided they were Israelites, which is why boys are still named "Jacob" or "Ezra."

What was this reason? Well, Anon argues that this reflects actual Jewish influence. He points to the fact that Cromwell rescinded the expulsion of Jews from England. But it is a little difficult to figure out how this could possibly have been the result of Jewish scheming. How can you scheme when you're not there?

They were right next door in the Netherlands, and at that time travel by sea was faster than travel by land, with the result that East Anglia was (for purposes of the movement of people and ideas) closer to the Netherlands than it was to London.

Heinrich Graetz, himself Jewish, discusses the "Jewish scheming" that you have ruled out.

Here we have a discussion of a "grand diplomatic design to reverse the expulsion of 1290", based on an argument that the return of the Jews to England was the last precondition to the return of the Messiah:

the only significant morphological resemblance between Judaism and multiculturalism is the absence of an afterlife.

Actually, Jews have always believed in an afterlife. In fact, recently someone wrote a whole book about the history of Jewish belief in an afterlife. The myth, still repeated today even by some Jews, probably originated with Christian detractors because we've never had a specific dogma about the afterlife that we were required to believe, the way Christians do.

I am a Jew, I believe in reincarnation, and there is plenty of historical precedent for that combination. My rabbis and the other members of my synagogue have never objected at all to this belief of mine. Plenty of rabbis believe it, now and in the past. On the other hand, a Christian acquaintance of mine, who had been exercising all his self-control not to invite me to accept Jesus, stopped speaking to me altogether when he found out that I believed in reincarnation.

If there were no Jewish afterlife, there would be no reason for us to say kaddish; we do that to lighten the deceased's suffering in Sheol (often translated as Hell, but more like Purgatory).